A proposal to the PovRay community .... how much interest is there in the
production of a PovRay based fulldome showreel? For those who may not be aware,
planetariums around the world are increasingly able to support high resolution
fulldome video. This is an exciting medium that gives a great sense of
immersion. For some more information on fulldome see this article
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulldome
Increasingly content for fulldome is not necessarily astronomy based and indeed
some are pure entertainment, for example Sonic Visions
    http://www.amnh.org/rose/dome/
I've been involved in a few productions, some are shown here.
    http://vimeo.com/channel17732
"Geometry series" was rendered in PovRay.

This is at the early days of imaging how we might create a collaborative show.
Some notes which I welcome comments on are:
- We would need a theme, my choice would be to make it broad enough to support
enough variation of content ideas.
- There needs to be a consistent transition between contributions, I'm
imagining providing a (simple) scene that contributers need to transition
to/from at either end of the contribution.
- In case it isn't obvious the contributions would be animations. Fulldome
content is all 30fps.
- In order to get the best possible standard this would be run as a competition.
The contributions in the final showreel voted on by contributors.
- I imagine each contribution being between 1 and 2 minutes long. Between 6 and
12 contributions.
- I can arrange a sound/music track.
- I will manage the compositing, titles, credits, etc.
- The frames are of course fisheye and need to be rendered at high resolution,
3600 pixels square is a standard. I can arrange the resources for the final
rendering, but there may need to be some limits placed on the rendering times.

What do you think?

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"Paul Bourke" <pau### [at] uwaeduau> wrote:
> A proposal to the PovRay community .... how much interest is there in the
> production of a PovRay based fulldome showreel? For those who may not be aware,
> planetariums around the world are increasingly able to support high resolution
> fulldome video. This is an exciting medium that gives a great sense of
> immersion. For some more information on fulldome see this article
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulldome

*sigh* I missed a single oportunity when a child to watch one of these fulldome
presentations at a local planetarium.  Thankfully, it was not HD. :)

> Increasingly content for fulldome is not necessarily astronomy based and indeed
> some are pure entertainment

Still, I think if it generates enough interest around, then povray is bound to a
new era of orbitting planets long past the old RSOCP era. :D

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Paul Bourke wrote:

> A proposal to the PovRay community .... how much interest is there in the
> production of a PovRay based fulldome showreel?

You may wish to post this in povray.animations as well.
I suppose most people here never rendered an animation
except maybe one for entering your last competition ;)

Maybe the best way would be to start with a smaller
competition to get people involved and give them first
experience with this medium without actually committing
to produce 1-2 minute high quality content for a
collaborative show.

Also, for those people without home planetarium: How do
you actually go about creating scenes which look good on
a dome when you only see a distorted fisheye view in 2D?

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On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:19:24 +0100, Christian Froeschlin <chr### [at] chrfrde> wrote:

>
>Also, for those people without home planetarium: How do
>you actually go about creating scenes which look good on
>a dome when you only see a distorted fisheye view in 2D?

A very good point.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote:
> >Also, for those people without home planetarium: How do
> >you actually go about creating scenes which look good on
> >a dome when you only see a distorted fisheye view in 2D?
>
> A very good point.

Maybe some smart POV-Ray script that takes the fisheye shots as input, and shows
you an excerpt of it in a more 2D-display compatible projection?

After all, when sitting in a planetarium you never actually see all of the dome
at once either - you can only concentrate on portions of it.

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> Also, for those people without home planetarium: How do
> you actually go about creating scenes which look good on
> a dome when you only see a distorted fisheye view in 2D?



With the perspective cam, have a look, jeeze
and the final with fisheye.

I may have missed it but, what of the file format/compression?

30fps*120 = 3600frames 3600x3600 hmm, big file.

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On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:35:50 EST, "clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

>Stephen <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote:
>> >Also, for those people without home planetarium: How do
>> >you actually go about creating scenes which look good on
>> >a dome when you only see a distorted fisheye view in 2D?
>>
>> A very good point.
>
>Maybe some smart POV-Ray script that takes the fisheye shots as input, and shows
>you an excerpt of it in a more 2D-display compatible projection?
>
>After all, when sitting in a planetarium you never actually see all of the dome
>at once either - you can only concentrate on portions of it.
>
>
Like, one that replaces the fisheye camera with a perspective one (in an
animation)? ;)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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> I may have missed it but, what of the file format/compression?
> 30fps*120 = 3600frames 3600x3600 hmm, big file.

Standard fare for good digital planetariums is to supply the frames as lossless
.... so png is usual, tga for the sites with older software. But the
contributors don't need to worry about that, rendering and subsequent file
transfer. I'll render everything locally.

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"Paul Bourke" <pau### [at] uwaeduau> wrote:
> > I may have missed it but, what of the file format/compression?
> > 30fps*120 = 3600frames 3600x3600 hmm, big file.
>
> Standard fare for good digital planetariums is to supply the frames as lossless
> .... so png is usual, tga for the sites with older software. But the
> contributors don't need to worry about that, rendering and subsequent file
> transfer. I'll render everything locally.

What software would be ok? POV-Ray 3.6, I guess; 3.7.0.beta.29 probably not :)
How about MegaPOV 1.2.1?

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"Paul Bourke" <pau### [at] uwaeduau> wrote:
> A proposal to the PovRay community .... how much interest is there in the
> production of a PovRay based fulldome showreel?

This sounds like great fun. Keep us posted.

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